Is it legal for somebody to do this?

[KmH]

Think of your pictures as a raw material, that your client has commissioned, and that they want to use to build something of their own. If that means a ****ty border, so be it.

That notion guarantee's the death of the retail photography industry. RIP.

 

[adversus]

Think of your pictures as a raw material, that your client has commissioned, and that they want to use to build something of their own. If that means a ****ty border, so be it.

That notion guarantee's the death of the retail photography industry. RIP.

The times, they are a changin'.

 

[GooniesNeverSayDie11]

The times, they are a changin'.

Yeah, but the laws of copyright haven't.

So I guess it boils down to two things when you are in this situation.

1) what agreement/contract terms were established.

2) Do you or don't you want to threaten legal action?

Technically, you own the copyright of these photos unless you release that copyright to the client, or unless some other agreement was made that would over turn that copyright. ( like being commissioned as a photographer in which it is specified that a specific party, like a corporation, retains copyrights to the work produced. )

Since you stated you don't want to threaten a law suit or anything, you can either learn from it and make a better agreement/contract next time, or you can try to ask them politely not to do it. Educating people is probably the best way to stop this kind of thing from happening.

I agree that free advertising is good, but just as its becoming easier for people to do as they please with digital files, its also becoming increasingly easier for them to inadvertantly ruin them. The average person has no understanding of resolution to images other than thinking the more megapixels, the bigger the picture. So simply resizing or cropping could make the pic look like garbage because you have ppi/dpi and also global sharpening possibly causing complications and degrading the image. This can also happen automatically when they get the photos printed. Thats why its always good practice to sell the prints and not the files. This doesn't mean you have to charge an arm and a leg. Maybe sell a base package and then offer a good deal on duplicates without much mark up. 1 person seeing your high quality work as it was intended is much better advertising than 500 seeing your completely butchered overly sharpened, auto-color corrected, dark prints hanging on someones wall.